1. Technical Field
The present invention embodiments pertain to data correlation. In particular, the present invention embodiments pertain to correlating a simulation model with a physical device based on correlation metrics and plotting the metrics to indicate variance between the simulation model and device.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Numerical analysis is widely used to find approximate solutions for problems lacking exact solutions. In mathematics, these problems can range from approximating the values of roots, e.g., square roots, and the value of π, to evaluating integrals and differential equations. The mathematical problems may represent many real-world problems for which numerical analysis can provide solutions (e.g., weather prediction, scheduling and pricing algorithms, crash simulation, explosion modeling, etc.).
Numerical analysis has been used to approximate solutions by using interpolation and extrapolation. Many techniques have been developed to provide approximations to various problems of interest. Initially, various functions and their approximations at certain points, computed to various degrees of precision, were available in reference books. With the advent of modern computers, many problems can now be modeled. For example, a finite element method is incorporated into software for finite element analysis (FEA) and can provide approximate solutions for complex heat flow problems, magnetic flux calculations, or to model structural failures. Other software applications may solve systems with a large number of equations or Markov chains.
For real-world applications, simulation is highly desirable because of the lower cost or the impracticality of building a prototype. In one example, a simulation is preferred over building a physical device or test case for each test scenario. In other examples, building a test case is impractical due to scaling effects (e.g., it is impractical to build a physical prototype to simulate world weather patterns or to simulate earthquakes).
While simulation of real-world systems can provide more practical and less expensive solutions when compared to actual physical prototypes, the simulation is almost always flawed because assumptions and approximations are introduced into the simulation mathematical model to simplify the processing requirements. In order to compare the simulation with the real-world system, a limited quantity of actual data may be plotted against simulation data to enable visual interpretation of the correlation.